About THINKING as the art of desire, and ART as the desire of THINKING FRESH 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018…

L’Espresso

This letter is addressed to a man, Eugenio Scalfari, who is one of the founders of La Repubblica, one of the most popular Italian newspapers, more or less equivalent to the New York Times, and L’Espresso, a weekly magazine. Scalfari has recently become a good friend of Pope Francesco, it is not clear if also having some religious turns of mind. From his apartment in Milan, Alberto has always been an acute observer of Italian political life, and sometimes in crucial moments he sent his thoughts to those in charge, to the president of the Republic Giorgio Napolitano, for instance. Feeling the candle burning the tail, this time Alberto’s considerations about end of life and the attempt at finding meaning in the inscrutable, has rather an existential quality. But no complaints. RA (editor)

I dare to use this confidential tone not so much because I’ve been a reader of L’Espresso since the first day, but because of that fact it follows that I can only be old (91), close to the age you are and pervaded by the idea that it’s anyway good to think of the ending procedures. Maybe in a few years I will reach mystic conclusions; at the moment I am convinced, although frankly annoyed, that everything has a conclusion, and ends. It’s irritating to think that after having worked, made projects, desired, imagined and build my life, the humans’ life that gave us Prassitele, Bernini, Galileo and Umberto Eco, the entire human race has the same destiny. And yet, this is how things must be. Energy, that’s the real big mystery!When the energy that provides calories to the brain is missing, transmission is gone, finished. We can’t even be sorry about it.

I do know that, when the first warnings will come, I won’t be so clearly logical anymore, maybe this is also part of the landing procedure. I’m starting to look at the objects around me, objects I love, as if I were able to enjoy them more, or to fix them in my memory hoping to bring them with me, pointlessly. Mah. I am sure nevertheless that, if we could get out of this world, out of the universe, and see from afar how things are down there, we would laugh about how simple and understandable they are. But, if the universe is infinite how could we get out of it?Infinity as well is not such a clear thing.

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Alberto is the oldest member of the Albertini family, my father’s brother. He is one of the pillars of this blog. Four years of on line collaboration produced a number of posts in which our family life is intermingled with our experiences in the art world, since childhood, sharing passion and life with his father Oreste the painter, my unforgotten grandfather.